I'd nearly blown up Her Maj with a firework. She grinned: 'Oh good, what fun': The Queen's party planner reveals the royals love nothing better than a nice disaster

Major Sir Michael Parker (retd) is a resolute patriot who advertises the fact by wearing red, white and blue at all times; which is why it’s a surprise to learn he once almost set fire to the Queen.

The story he tells involves the chain of beacons lit across the country to commemorate Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee in 1977: things started to go horribly wrong from the off.

As the Queen processed through thronging crowds to light the first flare, a generator broke, plunging the scene into semi-darkness.

One is amused: The Queen and Michael Parker during celebrations for the Silver Jubilee in 1977

Next, as Her Majesty, primed for her role in the live televised spectacle, took the torch from a little boy, he suddenly burst into tears, upset by all the hoo-hah.

Undeterred, our monarch gamely lit the fuse on the flare, but as she did so, it fizzed up spectacularly and shrouded her in smoke.

Then the bonfire it was supposed to ignite exploded into flames prematurely, while the hapless Sir Michael — who had orchestrated the whole event — clutched his head and groaned in horror. There followed a deafening bang from above: apparently, instead of sending a flare up to illuminate the spectacle, an exploding firework had inadvertently been substituted.

‘What on earth was that?’ asked HRH, and at this point Sir Michael gave a deep sigh and decided to come clean.

‘I’m afraid, Ma’am, that it is all going terribly wrong,’ he confessed. But far from scowling at him, a smile of delight suffused the Queen’s features and she declared: ‘Oh good, what fun!’

Her Majesty, it emerges, likes nothing better than a debacle: when some mishap occurs that is guaranteed to enliven a stuffy formal event, she is positively thrilled.

‘Oh yes, the Queen is always amused by cock-ups,’ says 71-year-old Sir Michael. ‘She has a fantastic sense of humour. She doesn’t miss a trick. If someone trips up or knocks into something, she always notices.’

This has been confirmed by her grandson Prince William, who said of his royal grand-parents: ‘One of the things I know that over the years they’ve loved is when things go wrong —they absolutely adore it. They’re the first people to laugh. The Queen has seen so many parades and performances; when there’s a small slip-up, it tickles their humour,’ he said.

The patriotic royal showman: Michael Parker wears red, white and blue at all times

This observation from a top source helps to explain why the Queen has conferred honours on Sir Michael, who has produced a dazzling array of events in celebration of our Royal Family.

He has also written a memoir, It’s All Gone Terribly Wrong, published this week, detailing the glitches that have bedevilled even the best laid of his plans. And the litany of exploding public address systems, prematurely detonating fireworks and soundless video links all, it seems, contrived to happen when the Queen was present.

Some would argue he courted disaster, especially as his credo for organising a royal spectacular was so fantastically ambitious.

‘Over 45 years, I’ve made myself a list of rules,’ he declares, before marshalling them briskly:

‘One: have a very big idea — then double it.

‘Two: if it’s easy to do it’s not worth doing.

‘Three: if you’re 100 per cent certain it’s going to work perfectly you’re probably not being ambitious enough. Make it more complicated immediately.

‘Four: if given more than one option, always choose the most difficult one.

‘Five: never treat “no” as an acceptable answer.

‘Six: try not to tell people what is supposed to happen. Then they will not know when it hasn’t.’

‘Seven: always stand as close to the principal guests as possible, so you’ll be the first in with your excuses when things go wrong.

‘Eight: make it fun for as many people as possible.’

Sir Michael Parker's memoir details all the glitches that have plagued even the best laid of plans

In pursuit of these goals, Sir Michael has organised — among many other extravaganzas — the Queen’s Golden Jubilee (she enjoyed the Silver enough to approve his plans for the next big anniversary), the Queen Mum’s 90th and 100th birthday celebrations, and 27 years’ worth of Royal Tournaments which the Queen attended every year, invariably inducing a tumult of nervousness in the participants.

One year, a Yeoman Guard saluted her, stepped backwards into an amplifier and blew up the sound system. The silence that fell over the stadium was profound; Sir Michael glimpsed Her Majesty looking on in ‘quiet amusement’ as a new one was frantically fitted.

‘I noticed your intake of cigarettes went up considerably,’ she later observed, and Sir Michael admitted the hitches always seemed to coincide with her visits. ‘Would you rather I didn’t come, then?’ she replied, beaming.

But, of course, she continued to attend until — almost — the last year the tournament was held, in 1999; but she declined to make a farewell visit, sending the Princess Royal instead because she was ‘less emotional’.

And always Sir Michael entertained her elaborately: he ransacked the Commonwealth for military acts, brought in mud-dancers from Papua New Guinea — plus a vat of clay to douse them in — as well as a Jordanian bagpipe band, and a pageant of mascots from various regiments.

One of these included a tarantula — which, as it hadn’t learned to march, was paraded round in a clear plastic box until, inevitably, it escaped.

Another year, he drafted in a huge, fire-breathing mechanical dragon to be slain by a St George — a dashing young Household Cavalry officer called James Hewitt.

Hewitt, who later achieved infamy as Princess Diana’s ‘love rat’, earned a stern reprimand from the usually genial Sir Michael when, during one performance, he decided to shoot the dragon with a pistol instead of slaying it with a lance.

‘The audience thought it was very funny,’ he observes drily, ‘but I did not.’ Unsurprisingly, the military tattoo was a favourite with all the royals, and Sir Michael met most of them there.

He recalls Princess Michael of Kent passing out cold during a royal line-up: ‘She turned to me and said: “I’m going to faint,” and with that she put her arms round my shoulders and collapsed. It was not an inconsiderable burden,’ he records wryly.

Prince Michael, meanwhile, carried on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Ever-conscious of practicalities, Sir Michael organised two royal loos — one blue, one pink — at the tournament, but recalls that he never saw anyone go into them; except the Princess of Wales, who strode purposefully into the gents’ to break up a ruckus between her two young sons and a group of their friends.

‘They were having a massive punch-up,’ he recalls. ‘She threw them out one by one.’

Golden: Sir Michael Parker insisted that the Queen ride in the Gold State Coach (pictured) for the Golden Jubilee that he organised

He remembers, too, a poignant conversation between Princess Diana and the Queen Mum when he sat down to tea with them in the Royal Box during an interval.

‘Diana lent forward and said: “Ma’am, we are so looking forward to your 100th birthday,” and Queen Elizabeth replied: “No, you mustn’t say that, it’s unlucky. I might be run over by a big red bus!”’

In the end, as Sir Michael sadly observes, ‘the big red bus came for Diana first, and far sooner than anybody could have dreamt’.

The Queen Mother, of course, lived to a robust old age, and Sir Michael, having entertained her regally on her 90th, also organised her 100th birthday celebrations.

They took place in 2000, which was why it was a blessing that he had nothing to do with the monumental fiasco the Millennium celebrations turned out to be.

From the outset, he detested New Labour’s Peter Mandelson, who, in his role as Minister for the Millennium, spurned Sir Michael’s advice and experience, simpering that the Dome would be a ‘wonder of the world’.

‘It was,’ concludes Sir Michael. ‘But not in a good way. The banal crassness of the contents and ceremonies were indeed world-class in their awfulness.’

Dislike: Sir Michael Parker did not like Peter Mandelson who spurned his advice

He then turns his vitriol on ‘the ghastly Blairs, swinging and bouncing up and down on Millennium Eve as though they’d had an underwear malfunction’.

‘All in all, a triumph of bureaucratic creativity and wasted opportunity,’ he harrumphs.

But instead of wasting time regretting his lack of involvement, he forged ahead with the Queen Mum’s birthday plans instead.

He remembers reeling back home ‘sozzled’ from Clarence House, where he’d been plied with stiff G&Ts during a briefing meeting.

It was his brave idea to invite the 300 or so civilian organisations that The Queen Mother represented to join a march in her honour: he calls it the ‘organised chaos bit’ of the celebration.

‘I told them they could march, skip or dance past, as long as they kept up with their guardsmen guides. And you have to hope they’ll be fine, because you can’t rehearse amateurs. They just get worse if you try. So it’s a huge risk.

‘I used to get really frightened, but of course you can’t show it because fear is contagious. So you tell everyone: “You’re absolutely marvellous!” And on the day, you hope adrenaline will carry them through.’

More timorous souls than Sir Michael feared he was taking on too much: he rebuffed them with habitual gusto. ‘Someone said: “You can’t have bulls in a parade,” [the Queen Mother was for decades patron of the Aberdeen Angus Cattle Society] and I said: “Don’t be so dreary!”’ he cries.

It seems that anyone who raised objections to his more outrageous ideas was invariably classed as ‘dreary’ or ‘wet’, while anyone who successfully negotiated a near- disaster would be swiftly congratulated with a ‘large drink’.

In the event, some of the creatures in the Queen Mum’s celebrations did prove problematic: the flock of white homing pigeons released at the start of the spectacle took off in the direction of Trafalgar Square: most of them were never seen again.

The parade, led by the Queen Mother’s butler Billy Tallon (aka Backstairs Billy) and a brace of her Corgis, threatened to descend into disarray when one of the dogs broke free and rushed off to join the menagerie of animals parading behind. Mercifully, Billy retrieved him just in time. ‘Billy managed to catch hold of the lead and do a sort of mixture of bow and curtsy to the Royal Box,’ says Sir Michael.

The Queen Mother was thrilled by the whole hoopla and sent a delightful letter, written in her own shaky hand, to Sir Michael — it is reverentially displayed at his home — in which she said: ‘I loved seeing the very smart military contingents followed by an orderly rabble — it was all marvellous.’

A couple of days later came another letter, telling him the Queen was going to knight him.Comparable honours were not in store, however, after HRH’s Golden Jubilee; in fact Sir Michael had a major run-in with the Queen’s Private Secretary Robin Janvrin over the whole affair. It seems that Mr Janvrin believed Michael over-stepped the mark with his breath-taking audacity: he had insisted to the Queen that she ride in her Gold State Coach.

Overcoming the obstacles: After much persuasion from Sir Michael Parker, the Queen made sure that she wore the appropriate outfit for her ride in the Gold State Coach for the Golden Jubilee

The episode was the stuff of pantomime. First, there was to be a parade of 1,000 horses, Sir Michael informed Her Majesty.

‘But you know nothing about horses,’ she objected.

‘Ma’am, that’s exactly why I think I might be able to do all this. I won’t be distracted by too many inconvenient facts,’ countered the redoubtable Sir Michael.

Then he brought up the Gold State Coach idea.

‘I’m not going in the gold coach,’ declared the Queen firmly.

‘But you must!’ insisted Sir Michael.

‘Oh no, I’m not,’ replied HRH.

‘Why not?’ asked the impudent knight. Then, when it emerged that the Queen said she wouldn’t be wearing the right clothes for the occasion — she would be at St Paul’s in the morning and her dress would be unsuitable for the party in the afternoon — Sir Michael had the temerity to suggest she should change.

‘She looked at me in a very old-fashioned way,’ he records.

‘The next morning, I got a very angry telephone call from Robin Janvrin, asking me what the hell I thought I was doing suggesting such a thing to the Queen. He was furious and never forgave me,’ he recalls.

However, he won the day: photos show that the Queen, who did indeed ride in the Gold State Coach, left Buckingham Palace in a blue ensemble and returned dressed in red.

Sir Michael loved organising the last Jubilee, so he is sad that ill-health forced him to retire from producing such events — most of which he did for no remuneration — long before this summer’s Diamond Jubilee.

However, there was an unexpected and happy result of suddenly having much more time on his hands: he fell in love with his PA, Emma, 51, and they have now been married for seven years.

Typically, the wedding breakfast went off with a bang — there was an exploding wedding cake — and indeed Sir Michael retains an aura of the schoolboy prankster.

He and Emma live in a glorious house in rural Hampshire by the River Test, where he has a den with a collection of toy soldiers.

‘Ah, the Massed Bands of the Household Cavalry,’ he says. ‘Every one a faithful copy of the band that played at the last Royal Tournament, but the bloody bass drummer keeps keeling over.’

Dear Sir Michael Parker. It seems to sum up the story of his wonderful, glittering career: pomp, parades, spectacle; then the inevitable — and heartwarming — descent into hilarity and farce.

IT’S ALL GOING HORRIBLY WRONG by Michael Parker is published by Bene Factum at £20. To order a copy at £16.99 (p&p free), call 0843 382 0000.